Rarely, though, do we think of the people who make this nice, relaxing evening with the kids or that new special person in our lives possible. Most notably are the service staff at your favorite restaurant. They run around literally all night, waiting on us hand and foot, making sure our drinks are refilled before they're empty. Your server is the person who acts as the intermediary, between the customer and the cook, making sure you get exactly what you want and how you want it.
The server often gets crap, so to speak, from both sides. They put up with our rudeness, our needy demands, they go out of their way to make the evening right, and they get the comments from the kitchen when the cooks screw up, your server is a micro-managment-machine, and they make your dining experience enjoyable. Even if the food is less than par, a good server can make the evening favorable anyway. Servers are, in fact, the most important piece of a dine-in restaurant's equation and what do they make on average? $2.83/hr.
Having talked to many servers and non-servers alike, it seems that most people generally assume that a server makes minimum wage like every other employee in a restaurant. But state and federal labor laws allow employers to pay their service staff a special minimum wage which is far less than the standard. What makes the situation worse is that most people don't understand exactly how to tip, or what to consider as a basis for the tip.
As a general rule, for me at least, my server never gets less than $5 from me, even if I simply sat down and had a coffee, but I also tend to be out at 2am and often sit for an hour or two. Generally, you should tip your server $1 for every $5 you spend, which works out to 20%, this simple formula can save you time at the register with your phone's ridiculous tip calculator that defaults (usually) to 10-15%.
Remember when I mentioned I sit for a few hours drinking coffee? Time should be taken into your tip as well, remember that on average, a table "turns" every 30-45 minutes in most family restaurants (like Denny's) and ever hour to hour and 15 minutes in higher-end establishments (think Olive Garden or Long Horn Steak House). So if you and your family sit for 3 hours catching up, you should probably at least tip 1.5 times the 20% standard (ex: $20 check works out to a $4 tip, divide the tip by 2, you get $2 add it to the original tip for a new tip of $6) however if you sit much longer consider doubling your tip all-together.
"Why should I double my tip or even tip more?" You might be asking, and the answer is fairly simple, if a server has 4 tables in their "section" that she is responsible for, and you take up one of them for 4 hours, they're effectively losing out on 3-4 tables worth of tips, which you should help to make up for, even if you've stopped needing refills an hour and a half ago.
If you've had a bad experience at a restaurant you probably shouldn't take it out immediately on your server, they may have had a death in the family, or perhaps another table was abusing them beyond what is expected, and trust me when I say there are some people who will run a server from minute one. If you thought your service was poor, tip no less than 10% and talk to the manager, they will usually adjust your bill for you or send you home with a free desert or gift card. If the manager or head waiter/waitress comps your bill, you should perhaps consider leaving at least a 15% tip, or even 20% because, after all, you did eat for free and it may not have been the server's fault.
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